YEREVAN (Dispatches) -- Armenia said Tuesday that nearly 50 of its soldiers had been killed in the worst clashes with Azerbaijan since their war two years ago, but Russia said it had convinced the historic rivals to agree to a rapid ceasefire.
The fighting was the worst since the end of a 2020 war between the ex-Soviet republics over the contested Karabakh region that left more than 6,500 killed on both sides.
Russia said it had succeeded in bringing the clashes to a halt, with the foreign ministry in Moscow saying a ceasefire had been agreed from 9am Moscow time (0600 GMT).
“We expect that an agreement reached as a result of Russian mediation on a ceasefire... will be carried out in full,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that it was “extremely concerned” by the uptick in fighting.
Armenia’s defense ministry said later that clashes had subsided but that the situation on the border “remains extremely tense”.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan addressed parliament on Tuesday morning, after he called French President Emmanuel Macron, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to demand “an adequate reaction” to “Azerbaijan’s aggressive acts”.
“For the moment, we have 49 (troops) killed and unfortunately it’s not the final figure,” Pashinyan told lawmakers.
Azerbaijan said it had also suffered casualties in the fighting, but did not specify the number of dead. The defense ministry in Yerevan said the clashes started early Tuesday, with Armenian territory coming under fire from artillery, mortars and drones in the direction of the cities of Goris, Sotk, and Jermuk.
But Azerbaijan accused Armenia of “large-scale subversive acts” near the districts of Dashkesan, Kalbajar and Lachin and said its armed forces were responding with “limited and targeted steps, neutralizing Armenian firing positions”.
Turkey, a long-standing political and military sponsor of Azerbaijan, accused Armenia of being responsible for the outbreak in fighting and urged Yerevan to negotiate.
“Armenia should cease its provocations and focus on peace negotiations and cooperation with Azerbaijan,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted after a phone call with Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told Pashinyan over phone that the eruption of border tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia should by no means endanger the Islamic Republic’s communication with Armenia.
The presidnet made it clear that a new war in the South Caucasus region is unacceptable to Iran and that Tehran is carefully monitoring the course of events.
He said all conflicts in the region should be resolved peacefully, noting that Iran’s position on the territorial integrity of states is clear.
Echoing Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Raisi underlined that “Iran’s communication with Armenia should not be endangered, and the communication channels should be under the sovereignty of the states.”
He has also expressed Iran’s readiness to support the establishment of peace in the region, adding that the issue of Armenia’s security is important to Iran.
Pashinyan on Tuesday chaired an emergency session of the country’s security council that agreed to formally ask for military help from Moscow, which is obligated under a treaty to defend Armenia in the event of foreign invasion.
Armenia is a member of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) which also includes several former Soviet republics in Central Asia.
Last week, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing one of its soldiers in a border shootout.
In August, Azerbaijan said it had lost a soldier and the Karabakh militias said two of its members had been killed and more than a dozen injured.
The neighbors fought two wars -- in the 1990s and in 2020 -- over the Karabakh region, Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated enclave.
The six weeks of brutal fighting in the autumn of 2020 ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire.
Under the deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had occupied for decades and Moscow deployed about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.
During EU-mediated talks in Brussels in May and April, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Pashinyan agreed to “advance discussions” on a future peace treaty.
Ethnic Armenian separatists mutinied against Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.